Intra-Organizational Social Media and Employee Idea Generation:Analysis based on the Spanning-Relevance Framework

Intra-organizational social media platforms are expected to help build a flexible corporate stage that facilitates employees'communication and leverages creative idea generation.However,whether and how these systems can expedite the creativity of employees remains unclear.This paper attempts to address the impacts of employees'social relationships on intra-organizational social media on their idea generation quantity and quality.Drawn upon the extant literature in the fields of information systems and organizational behavior,a theoretical model is postulated on the basis of analyzing the attributes of social ties and exchanged information content in light of a two-dimensional framework that juxtaposes boundary spanning and work relevance.The model is empirically tested using data obtained from two internal application systems of a large telecommunications company.Test results validate that employees'online social relationships with different attributes are discriminably associated with their group identification and proactive creativity.Meanwhile,proactive creativity and group identification both show the positive impacts on idea generation quantity,whereas only proactive creativity has a significant positive impact on idea generation quality.These findings contribute to the literature on intra-organizational social media and employee idea generation,by uncovering the links among employees'online social relationships,mental processes,and idea generation.

Factors influencing teamwork and collaboration within a tertiary medical center

AIM: To understand how work climate and related factors influence teamwork and collaboration in a large medical center. METHODS: A survey of 3462 employees was conducted to generate responses to Sexton's Safety Attitudes Questionnaire(SAQ) to assess perceptions of work environment via a series of five-point, Likert-scaled questions. Path analysis was performed, using teamwork(TW) and collaboration(CO) as endogenous variables. The exogenous variables are effective communication(EC), safety culture(SC), job satisfaction(JS), work pressure(PR), and work climate(WC). The measure-ment instruments for the variables or summated subscales are presented. Reliability of each sub-scale are calculated. Alpha Cronbach coefficients are relatively strong: TW(0.81), CO(0.76), EC(0.70), SC(0.83), JS(0.91), WP(0.85), and WC(0.78). Confirmatory factor analysis was performed for each of these constructs. RESULTS: Path analysis enables to identify statistically significant predictors of two endogenous variables, teamwork and intra-organizational collaboration. Significant amounts of variance in perceived teamwork(R2 = 0.59) and in collaboration(R2 = 0.75) are accounted for by the predictor variables. In the initial model, safety culture is the most important predictor of perceived teamwork, with a β weight of 0.51, and work climate is the most significant predictor of collaboration, with a β weight of 0.84. After eliminating statistically insignificant causal paths and allowing correlated predictors1, the revised model shows that work climate is the only predictor positively influencing both teamwork(β = 0.26) and collaboration(β = 0.88). A relatively weak positive(β = 0.14) but statistically significant relationship exists between teamwork and collaboration when the effects of other predictors are simultaneously controlled.CONCLUSION: Hospital executives who are interested in improving collaboration should assess the work climate to ensure that employees are operating in a setting conducive to intra-organizational collaboration.

Reliability and validity of the public innovation Hexagon(PIH)as applied to the Spanish social services

Social services are a protection system that seeks to assist people throughout their lives.Innovation is essential for enabling us to respond to the problems that society is currently facing and to adapt to our changing world.This paper validates an instrument based on the Public Innovation Hexagon(PIH),for measuring the degree to which an innovation culture is being implemented in the Spanish social services system.A sample group of social services professionals were asked to complete a questionnaire based on the variables that make up the PIH model.After our initial validation of the PIH model,we reduced the 42 initial items to 32,while maintaining the initial six dimensions.The objective was to eliminate redundant items and ensure that the resulting end model was more solid and reliable.The new improved model(PIHn)that we created achieved greater consistency with a smaller number of items while maintaining the initial six dimensions.